Piaget's Theory Of Cognitive Development Case Study

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The focus of this case study is Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development. Piaget’s Theory states that children learn to think and problem solve in stages, mostly based on age. I observed a 2-year-old child who I will call “Sarah” to test his theory. I have known Sarah all my life, she is my sister. Based on Sarah’s age, I observed to see if she fell into Piaget’s Preoperational Stage of Cognitive Development. To determine this I answered the following questions: Does Sarah understand that an object or word can represent something else? Can Sarah focus on more than one activity at the same time? Does Sarah problem solve or learn through creative play? Does Sarah have an egocentric viewpoint? Can Sarah tell that quantity stays the same, even …show more content…
The oldest is a 16-year-old girl who I will call “Anne”. Underneath Anne is 14-year-old twin girls who I will call “Tamara” and “Tracy”. Under them is a 13 year girl who I will call “Emily”. Finally, she has a 10-year-old brother who I will call “David”. Sarah’s parents have been married for 17 years. The negative situation that I found very prominent in this family is they don’t have a stable relationship with Edward’s parents, things that happened in the past has made that very difficult for the family. The entire family is Caucasian. They are also mostly of German descent. Edward went to Lake Superior College and got his Associate’s degree in Software Development. Elizabeth never went to college after high school because she got married at 18. She decided after David had started elementary school she was going to go back to school to get her nursing degree. When she found out she was pregnant with Sarah, she decided to take a year off. She will finally be finished with the nursing program this December. This family is an extremely close, and loving family. Even though they aren’t close with Edward’s parents, they are extremely close with Elizabeth’s parents. When Elizabeth is in school and Edward is at work, Elizabeth’s parents will come …show more content…
The third driving question of my case study is “Does Sarah problem solve or learn through creative play?” To test this, I just watched Sarah play. One incident that I thought stood out was when Sarah was playing with her Mickey Mouse stuffed animals and she couldn’t find Donald Duck. She made her stuffed animals go on a search party for Donald Duck, her animals ended up finding Donald so the search party was called off. She used her creative play to problem solve and find Donald. Again she fits into Piaget’s preoperational

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